HAIKU DIALOGUE – Migration – Immigration – long list

Comments (54)

1. These poems are wonderful! Made me think about my family’s migration from Hawaii to California, and then from California all the way to Connecticut and then back again. (Dad was in the U.S. Navy.) These are so inspirational, I’m grabbing paper and pencil right now! Again, beautiful, wonderful poems.

   1. Thanks Yvonne. I’m happy to hear this theme has inspired you. It’s a rich topic. Please stay tuned for the final prompt, in a few weeks or so, because it is all about ‘internal’ migration and all of your moves within country will be a great source of inspiration for you. As posted in my original blurb on the theme of Migration first was immigration, next is flora/fauna migrations and the last is ‘internal’. More to come on that when posted.

      1. Thanks, Carole. I’m looking forward to it!

2. So many life stories spring from this series of haiku from everywhere! Congratulations to everyone on the poetry of life!
   Thank you, Carole, for including my haiku on the position of a medical doctor, too! I mostly meet immigrants in the clinic. It’s hard to single out some haiku that I like better. Here are a few though:

   on a cold Scottish day
   the pavement artist
   draws deserts of his home

   Ann Rawson
   Scotland, UK

   expat for dinner
   tuning our vowels
   to her taste

   Daya Bhat, India

   terra straniera…
   mia madre sta guardando
   la stessa luna

   foreign land…
   my mother is watching
   the same moon

   Angiola Inglese, Italia

   far from home
   my face in the mirror
   a reminder

   Meera Rehm, UK

   november rain . . .
   under the bus shelter
   an immigrant family

   Daniela Misso, Italy

   a waiting line…
   fading violets in the hands
   of a little refugee

   Urszula Marciniak, Poland

   1. Medical exam of an immigrant –
      I ask him how they say:
      “breathe deeply!“

      Tomislav Maretic
      Zagreb, Croatia

      Do happy you offered up a few of your favorites Tom. Thanks! Your haiku reminded me of the challenges doctor’s face when treating immigrants because of the language difficulties. And the same goes to the frustration of the immigrant who tries to explain his symptoms!

3. Grateful my offering was listed this week, as it is dedicated to the memory of my in-laws. When I would ask them what they were saying about a person, they would just laugh and say it didn’t translate as well into English. A little fun between their married selves.

   grandpa Wilensky
   we became the Wilsons
   after Ellis Island

   Kathabela Wilson

   I enjoyed this as I’ve always been intrigued by the background of name changes.

   silent escape
   a rum-soaked paci
   for the baby

   David Green

   As a mother, imagining having to try to keep a baby quiet during a perilous journey gave me pause.

   1. the in-laws
      gossiping about family
      in another language

      Debbie Scheving
      Bremerton WA USA

      Delighted you shared a few of your favorites Debbie. I enjoyed the lightness of your haiku, because I have had experiences myself with my friend and I when we visited her relatives in Norway. We were able to talk to each other about what we were eating, and sometimes it was funny knowing the family didn’t understand what we were saying. As in when they tried to explain the deer we were eating, were ‘deer balls’. All in good fun, lots of smiles, gestures and a good meal despite no common language.

      1. Thank you, Carole.

4. A great selection

   I can relate to the imagery in …

   growing new roots
   the unfamiliar scent
   of the soil

   Joanne van Helvoort
   The Netherlands

   the soil and the native bush have a distinct smell of country.

   1. I agree Wanda I loved the earthiness of Joanne’s haiku and its potential to be read on a metaphoric level as well in ‘growing new roots’, and that’s so similar to what it feels like when we transplant ourselves to another country.

5. Hi Everyone,

   I appreciative Carole’s selection of my poem. This theme has a deeper resonance for me having lived in the West Bank, and currently in Amman since August. My wife and I have met many variation of migrants, not only in Palestine and Jordan, but also in our visits to Egypt and Kuwait. The one constant is each story ends with an admission of a deep love of their own respective homeland.

   Here are a few that stood out to my reading.
   .
   culture shock
   how tom yum tastes better
   when slurped

   Kanjini` Devi
   The Far North, Aotearoa NZ
   .
   terra straniera…
   mia madre sta guardando
   la stessa luna

   foreign land…
   my mother is watching
   the same moon

   Angiola Inglese
   Italia
   .
   the hail
   of unknown words
   migrant worker

   Marilyn Ashbaugh
   Gulf Stream, Florida
   .
   refugee camp –
   she’s sharing her bread
   with a sparrow

   Daniela Lăcrămioara Capotă
   Romania
   .
   adopted country
   trying to put Humpty Dumpty
   together again

   Vandana Parashar
   India
   .
   rehomed the mongrel’s eyes

   Keith Evetts
   Thames Ditton UK
   .
   new in town
   browsing for stories of home
   in the bookstore

   Richard Straw
   Cary, North Carolina
   .
   comparing
   the size of lizards
   old and new home

   Deborah Karl-Brandt
   Germany
   .
   immigration –
   little girl carries
   the sea in a bottle

   Aljoša Vuković
   Croatia, Šibenik

   1. I appreciate your commentary, John. You are living a life immersed in a rich cultural experience. Love how you focused on the sweetness and innocence of children in your haiku. There is no barriers with kids.

      old town
      the child’s smile
      needs no translation

      John S Green
      Amman, Jordan

6. Thank you Carole for selecting my haiku
   This was a lived experience All your selections are beautiful , each haiku had a story of migration to tell

   1. I felt the truth of your haiku Sudha, and always marvel at how culinary exchanges bind us together. What a loss if we didn’t experience each other’s cuisine!

      Chinese new year
      cauldrons of chow mein
      feeding whole streets of Kolkata

      Sudha Devi Nayak
      Bhubaneswar India

7. Thank you so much, ed. Carole for including mine in this wonderful mix! Each one brings back interesting memories to mind.
   Awaiting the commentaries next week!
   Thank you team Haiku Dialogue
   Daya

   1. expat for dinner
      tuning our vowels
      to her taste

      Daya Bhat
      India

      Thank you Daya. I found your haiku so interested and original. The issue of language, and the way accents change when we move to another country and how those at home see this! On a smaller scale, my husband and I moved to the south (USA) and carried a southern accent because of it, and our families up north (Canada) would comment on it! It’s true that we pick up accents without even knowing we are doing so.

8. Thank you so much for selected my haiku, Carole! Congratulations to all!

   1. I appreciated your gentle and poignant haiku Urszula. We all recognize ‘waiting lines’, and sometimes they can be unbearable. The wilting violets a poignant look at how the poor child must be feeling.

      a waiting line…
      fading violets in the hands
      of a little refugee

      Urszula Marciniak
      Poland

9. Super inspiring! I wrote three haiku just reading through the collection.
   Congratulations to all.

   1. Sally, I love hearing that you were inspired by reading through the selections. Thank you for sharing.

10. indian waiter
    someone asks between courses
    when he’s going home

    John Hawkhead’s piece is one of the very few written from a suspicious local’s perspective, I found that quite telling!

    Thanks for the range of selections

    1. Mike, so glad you pointed out John’s poem. It could be read in different ways, but I interpreted it to mean that the Indian waiter is probably a citizen, and the question is an insult to someone thinking he should go back to India. Of course, we all read into poems in our own ways, but I chose this for its realism. We know this happens…

    2. Thanks Mike, sadly this is a real life observance.

11. Thank you so much, Carole, for including my poem. I found your selections so wonderfully varied and meaningful. This prompt was such an exploration.

    I was quite struck by

    long river to cross…
    a child refugee’s
    paper boat

    Alvin Cruz
    Philippines

    As someone who grew up along the Rio Grande, Alvin’s first line had me imagining the many who have so dangerously crossed it (especially lately). But then the added twist and pathos of L2 & 3 brought such a powerful metaphor of the challenge.

    1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Eavonka. I was especially touched by your perspective on the theme from your experiences as a teacher.

       hugging the twins
       in my 3rd period class
       mother deported

       Eavonka Ettinger
       Long Beach, CA

12. Thank you so much for selected my haiku, Carole! Much appreciated!
    Congratulations to all!

    1. You are welcome Steliana. Your poem reminded me of limited I am in speaking only English. I know many friends whose children are being raised in two languages.so they can communicate with their grandparents.
       It brings to mind the alphabet song ….

       garden of fairies –
       I teach my nephew the alphabet
       in a different language

       Steliana Cristina Voicu
       Ploiesti, Romania

13. Nice selections!

    homesick —
    only the moon
    looks familiar

    in a foreign country —
    I order the homemade pie

    1. Thanks for the poem Earl! Good to see you and hope you stick around for prompt 2 coming up next week, I think.

14. What an amazing collection of poems! Some are heartbreaking and some make me chuckle, but all catch some of the essence of immigration. I can’t even begin to choose a favorite. Kudos to everyone!

15. fresh baked baklava
    she spreads a little sweetness
    around new neighbours
    .
    Tracy Davidson
    Warwickshire, UK
    .
    a lovely haiku

16. Congratulations to all those selected for their apt haiku. It’s great to see how resourcefully people deal with a global phenomenon like migration! My Facebook will be bulging with haiku gems again!
    Many thanks to Carole and all the Haiku Foundation staff for selecting this valuable haiku!

17. Thank you Carole for selecting my haiku.
    This week’s verses are very significant, among my favorites :

    “Born in Poland
    Died in Australia”
    Great-great-great grandparents’ grave

    Haley Pearse
    Australia

    emigrant dilemma,
    who will tend
    ancestors’ graves

    Christopher Seep
    USA

    grandpa Wilensky
    we became the Wilsons
    after Ellis Island

    Kathabela Wilson
    USA

    1. Thank your for sharing a few favorites Angiola. They show a poignant side of immigration, what can be lost….and yours expresses beautifully the connection you feel with your far away mother through the constancy of the moon.

       foreign land…
       my mother is watching
       the same moon

       Angiola Inglese
       Italia

18. Thank you everyone. I was so impressed by the responses to the theme of Migration and especially to the prompt of “immigration’. I’m humbled by what I’ve learned, that for everyone who leaves their homeland there are those left behind, and in between, a myriad of experiences, some funny, some poignant. Please share a few that speak to you, and I will too.

    bitter melon
    my son asks for milk
    in Tagalog

    Adele Evershed
    Wilton, Connecticut

    The first line brought me a sense of bittersweetness to this moment. I wondered if the child was adopted and still speaking his mother tongue. How sweet he’s asking in his language, how sad that he might eventually lose that language. The juxtaposition of bitter melon set the tone for me. As a reader this is what I took from the poem. There might be other interpretations as well.

    1. Thank you Carole for commenting on my ku. That’s what I love about this poetic form- a reader can form their own interpretation and I see the poem in a whole new way (even one I wrote!)
       I lived in Hong Kong and Singapore for a few years. It was the norm to have ‘live in help’ ( or amah) usually from the Philippines. I had 4 young children and being so far from family the help was invaluable. On the other hand the guilt of leaving your child in the care of another was always there. So ‘bitter melon’ seemed the best way to describe that feeling- of course you want your child to be happy with the person you entrust their care to but there is also that part of you that is jealous when they ask for the amah over you!
       In fact there is a series just airing on Amazon Prime-Expats which scraps the surface of this dilemma.
       I’ve thoroughly enjoyed reading this issue
       Cynthia’s ku really resonated with me as after 6 years in Singapore ‘can la’ became part of my vocabulary. Looking forward to next week

       saying eh
       like a local
       my year in Canada

       Cynthia Anderson
       Yucca Valley, California

       1. Thanks for enriching my reading with the backstory to your haiku Adele. I enjoyed knowing more about this one. I’,m happy to have clued in to the mood.

19. Congratulations to all the poets. It’s refreshing to see many new names in the column this week. Obviously, this prompt rang a bell for everyone in the haiku community.

    Thanks, Eavonka, for your friendship and help. I can’t imagine what those two went through.

    Congrats to my fellow Ohioan, Valentina, on your puzzle piece haiku. It’s so relatable.

    Thanks for including one of mine in the mix, Carole. It’s appreciated. Thanks, KJ and Lori, for all your help behind the scenes.

    1. Thank you, Nancy, for broadening the theme with your lovely haiku. I was hoping for little moments like this, interactions with people from another country. I tried to learn Spanish when I was young, and failed. Maybe I would have fared better if I had co-workers who spoke Spanish!

       co-worker
       I pick up Spanish
       through osmosis

       Nancy Brady
       Huron, Ohio

       Th

       1. Carole,
          I worked in a pharmacy, located in the largest Spanish speaking population North of Puerto Rico (or so I was told). My tech, a native speaker, spoke Spanish fluently and translated my advice to patients and vice versa their words to me. I also experienced young (10-12) children translating my advice/information to parents and grandparents and their questions translated to me. Over time, I picked up enough of the language (osmosis) to not speak it, yet able to translate it, roughly. I surprised her one day when I
          casually referred to her conversation with a police officer who stopped in to chat and was willing to go get us coffee. When she realized I understood much of their convo, she freaked. She was an awesome employee, a true co-worker, who helped all the staff out daily.
          Thanks Carole for choosing my haiku.

          1. Thanks for sharing the backstory to your haiku Nan. Enjoyed it!

    2. Thank-you Nancy and congrats on having yours included.

    3. You are such a treasure, Nan. I was so happy to see both our poems selected. Thanks for your friendship and kindness.

20. Thank-you Carole for publishing my haiku. Congrats to all the poets who were chosen. Thank-you also to Lori, Kathy, and the Haiku Foundation.

    1. I can only imagine your haiku resonates with many Valentina. The 2nd generation straddle two cultures….it has to have its challenges….

       second generation
       the child with a puzzle piece
       that does not fit

       Valentina Ranaldi-Adams
       Fairlawn, Ohio USA

       1. Thank-you Carole for commenting on my haiku.

21. Many thanks for undertaking this during a time of domestic chaos, Carole! Much appreciated. And gratitude for including my little line.

    I particularly liked:

    row after row
    of bent backs
    picking peanuts

    Dan Campbell

    And am looking forward to the commentaries next week.

    1. It is interesting that Keith could relate most to the migrant worker haiku. Personally, I was fascinated by the many haiku/senryu by people like me, immigrants to another country, though not migrant workers. Thank you, Carole.

       1. Hi Christa, Migrants in my state pick fruit and I’m not sure what we’d do without them. They migrate to where they can get jobs, and usually send the money back to their family at home.

          The response have shown me two sides of the coin , the ones that leave, and the ones left behind. The stuff of poetry!

       2. Well, although I’ve lived in seven countries other than my own, totalling twenty years, it was always as a diplomat representing, and remaining connected with, the home country. So hardly a migrant?…I have no direct experience of many of the things addressed in several of this week’s verses. I did meet many expats though, in three categories: partnered locally and completely assimilated; or limiting themselves to a little self-contained British community, playing golf and bridge and sticking to fish and chips; or like me, temporarily ‘passing through’ for a few years working or at a university (and generally relishing the culture). But I left a piece of my heart in most countries I lived in.

          With the advent of the web and things like free voice-over-internet and now free Zooming, I think there’s less homesickness, distance and maybe alienation than when I lived in Maputo in a time before the internet of no television, only six international telephone lines you could never get on (fiendishly expensive), a short-wave world radio for the BBC World Service to crackle over, and letters by diplomatic bag once a fortnight. I would get The Times after two senior colleagues, a whole fortnight’s worth, and I would start with the oldest. By the third day the headlines in the oldest one had completely disappeared, which was calming… But not relevant to this week’s topic.

    2. rehomed the mongrel’s eyes

       Keith Evetts
       Thames Ditton UK

       Thank you Keith. Yes, I worried for half a second, about the theme, but then realized we are more than the current crisis. Migration will always be with us. I could not resist your haiku, and even thought it would best fit the upcoming 2nd prompt, your haiku expressed, through a dog’s eyes, what it might be like to be constantly searching for a safe place to settle. It also suggested the massive shuttling around all those without a home must do. Yes, a wonderful haiku about a dog, yet about us. Sometimes a haiku is a complete metaphor for those that enjoy looking deeply into things.

       1. Thank you, Carole: it’s nice to be understood perfectly!

    3. Thanks amigo, I’m glad you enjoyed reading my verse!

    4. Slightly redolent of Gregory Longenecker’s Touchstone Award for Individual Poems 2020:

       strawberry season
       acres and acres
       of bent backs

       published in The Heron’s Nest XXI:1.

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